The Skin Cancer Risk from Tanning Beds

I didn’t grow up tanning. I have fair skin and red hair, and I didn’t like
lying out in the sun or even going to the beach. And when I was exposed to the
sun, I didn’t get tan. I just got a little pink and freckled.

In fact, I got my first tan when I went to Florida in 2001. I was 17 years
old, and I was really excited about how I looked. When I returned home, I
started going to a tanning salon to keep up the color. Over the next two and a
half years I returned once a week. I wasn’t super dark; I was just tan for my
complexion. I thought it was OK because a nurse friend told my family that a
tanning bed doesn’t cause skin cancer the way sunlight does. I learned she was
wrong when I developed skin cancer.

Recommended Related to Melanoma/Skin Cancer

By Leslie PepperHow coffee protects you, and 11 other surprising ways to stop the most
common cancer
1. All doctors are not created equal: When researchers from Emory
University School of Medicine looked at the records of more than 2,000 melanoma
patients, they found that those whose growths had been diagnosed by a
dermatologist were more likely to have early-stage cancer — and to survive
their disease — than those who'd been diagnosed by another kind of doctor. It
may be that dermatologists...

Tanning beds can cause melanoma

I had a mole on my stomach that I showed my doctor. She was nonchalant about
it -- it was dark and itchy, but it didn’t have the irregular borders of
melanoma. She said I could get it removed for cosmetic reasons, and I did. But
after it was removed, I was told I had stage 2 melanoma. Suddenly we were
talking about cancer, survival rates, lymph nodes. I was completely shocked and
very scared.

The doctors did further surgery to take out any other cancerous cells. They
also removed eight of my lymph nodes, which, luckily, showed no signs of
cancer. The 7-inch incision took a really long time to heal. But I went back to
classes at Roger Williams University (in Bristol, R.I.) three days after the
surgery.

Recovering from skin cancer

I was very depressed. I blamed myself for getting skin cancer. I didn’t
think my college friends understood how serious my illness was, and I resented
that they kept lying in the sun and going to tanning salons -- even knowing
what had happened to me.

I’ve been cancer-free for four years now. I graduated from college and work
as an advertising and promotions manager for Six Flags New England -- a job I
love. I know I’m at a higher risk for melanoma than someone who’s never had it,
but I go to the dermatologist every six months to get checked, and I see my
oncologist once a year.